Berlin eyes 'firewall' to contain Greek debt crisis

Germany, the eurozone's biggest economy, is examining how to build a "firewall" to prevent the Greek debt crisis tearing through the countries that use the euro, media reports said on Wednesday.

• Tourists flock to Germany in 2011 (9 Feb 12)
• Brutal cold triggers reserve power plants (9 Feb 12)
• Germany expels four Syrian diplomats (9 Feb 12)

Berlin has decided to "take a significant step" to deal with the crisis in the wake of steep falls in the euro and pressure on bond prices, the newspaper reported citing an unnamed German government official, the Financial Times reported.

"We are thinking about what we should do if the crisis spills from Greece into other euro countries," said the official. "So it's more about finding firewalls, containing the problem, than principally about helping the Greeks."

There are "no concrete plans" as yet, the official added.

The Financial Times Deutschland, the German language version of the paper, reported Wednesday that Berlin is preparing an aid plan to help Greece resolve its debt problems.

It said German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble was working on both a bilateral basis and at the European level on putting together a package to help Athens.

Citing unnamed sources in the government coalition, it said Berlin was "looking at a European solution but measures by Germany alone were not excluded."

Schäuble will inform officials in the main government conservative party on Wednesday, the report said.

Greece is struggling to put its fiscal house in order after massively overspending with borrowed money, with its problems putting pressure on the whole eurozone.